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Raumathar
Raumathar was a great eastern empire that once included the lands that became Rashemen and Thay. Its people were known to be powerful battle-wizards, and their art of fighting is still known by some. History Raumathar was established by the Raumviran people in -900 DR, setting their capital as Winterkeep. In -623 DR, Raumathar surprised its neighbour Narfell by attacking them while they were being beaten in a war with Mulhorand, beginning the first of many wars with the Nar people. In -160 DR, the last of these wars began. Known as The Great Conflagration, it culminated in the ruination of both empires a decade later. The surviving Raumvirans were then pushed westward by the Suren people. A Brief History The great empires of Narfell and Raumathar were warlike nations that coalesced out of the migrating northern tribes that were paid to fight as mercinaries in the Orcgate Wars. They had weapons of iron (unlike the Mulhorandis' bronze ones) and soon developed powerful magic of their own. They quickly subdued large tracts of land, replacing the Mulhorandi culture with their own.1 With the Great Glacier at that time enveloping all of Vaasa and Damara in the west, covering Icelace Lake and the Teardrops, and reaching to the Icerim Mountains in the east 2, the northward-migrating tribes found themselves limited in their choices; both further westward and further northward travel was denied to them. It was at this time that the tribes, united in their desire to find a new homeland, splintered. Rauthok, a charismatic and intelligent man who had studied much of the Mulhorandi arts, persuaded many of the tribes to follow him east across the great lake (Lake Ashane), where he promised open land and warmer climes (which he knew from studying Mulhorandi maps of the area). The other tribes, still following their shamans and demonologists, opted to stay where they were, attacking and enslaving many of their new neighbors (the natives of the Great Dale). The Narfellians quickly became the dominant power in the area, as their mounted horsemen easily defeated their enemies (it has been speculated that the Narfellians, if not the Raumatharans, originate in the same southern area as the ancient Arkaiuns of Dambrath. The similar horse strains would seem to support this theory).3 After conquering the areas known today as Narfell, the Great Dale, and Ashanath, they followed their former allies eastward, pushing the Raumans (as the eastern tribes were now calling themselves) before them, and conquering huge swathes of the northern steppes.4 At the Battle of Riualyn, the Rauman finally defeated the Narfellian horsemen. The Rauman battlemages took center stage, as their magics proved the deciding factor. Riualyn was a turning point in the history of the Rauman, as they drove the Narfellians back across the Ashane and established the mages as the ruling class (up till this point in history, Rauman mages were mostly practicing tattoo- and rune-magic, which are limited in both power and effectiveness. It is unknown just how they gained their mastery of more conventional magic - especially the schools of invocation/evocation and conjuration/summoning - but many scholars speculate that their knowledge came from the northernmost ruins of the Imaskari, in the area of Priador).5 After Riualyn, the Rauman soon capitalized on their success, establishing the Raumathar Empire. This nation drove into the Endless Wastes, eventually extending as far as Sossal in the north and the Lake of Mists in the south.6 Their battlemages proved an even match for the Narfellian horsemen and demonologists, and the two powers settled into an uneasy period of empire. Although separated by several natural barriers (including the Great Glacier, the Ashane, and the Priador), the two empires clashed continually in border skirmishes and raids. The two early empires had a great effect on other peoples, besides themselves. Many of the natives of the Great Dale, long a subject people of the Narfellians, migrated west across the Easting Reach where they fought the teeming goblin hordes in the mountains, and later formed the peoples of Impiltur and the Vast (many sages believe that a later wave of these peoples, fleeing the imminent destruction of the two empires,crossed over the Dragon Reach and became the ancestors of the Dalesmen).7 In Raumathar, raids by the various nomad tribes of the steppes were a constant problem (In later years, the Suren, in particular, were a problem. Pushed out of Kara-Tur by the Kao, the Suren expanded to the west and for years harried the eastern border of Raumathar. When the final war between Narfell and Ramathar occured, the Suren drove the Raumatharans from the steppe. Continuing their advance, the barbarian horde even overwhelmed most of modern Narfell before it was stopped).8 However, relations and trade with the Sossarim to the north and the dwarves of the easternly Firepeaks were more relaxed. In fact, the Raumatharans had such a good relationship with the dwarves of the Firepeaks that the stout folk were often seen in the cities and towns of the Empire, and many of them fought in the army of Raumathar 9 (including the company led by Theodo Greataxe, famed in legend as the ghosts of Dead Dwarf Bridge).10 Perhaps the greatest effect the two empires had on a people was that of the nation of Rashemen. This region, caught between the two powers, spent many years as disputed ground. Armies of both lands marched and retreated through Rashemen, and the native Rashemi themselves developed a warrior culture while fighting one or the other of the two warring states. Years after the collapse of both Narfell and Raumathar, the Rashemi united to form a new nation with the assistance of the mysterious witches.11 At thier height, both empires had many wondrous achievements, especially in regards to architecture. Most traces of Narfellian buildings are lost today, but several Raumatharan ruins still exist today. 12 (that these sites happened to survive would seem to point to the Raumathari as prodigious builders, given the extent of the devastation that affected the Wastes). Eventually, Narfell and Raumathar escalated their border skirmishes into all-out war with each other. It was a bitter and bloody struggle, full of the tales of great heroes: Rauthok, Jesthren, Halduplac, and many others whose names are lost to the sands of time.13 The two empires held one final cataclysmic battle and destroyed each other utterly. Netherworld fiends fought against dragons, cities were burned, and in the end, Narfell and Raumathar were no more.14 Many contemporary historians are quick to judge Narfell the "victor" in the war, for the land of Narfell still exists today as do its' people (albeit in a more primitive form), whereas "Boundless Raumathar" today has been blasted into the barren, forboding land of the Endless Wastes. However, it should be pointed out that descendants of the Raumatharai, the Raumvira, do live on; a stocky, thick-bearded race that lives around the shores of the Lake of Mists (especially in the city of Almorel), these people trace their ancestry back to the fall of the Raumathar empire (although the nomads who surround the Lake of Mists have had their effect, too).15 As well, the Rashemi people exhibit these physical traits, much more so than those of the Nar peoples. The horsemen of Raumathar were vassals of Imaskar for a lengthy period and to describe them as "nomadic, hunter-gatherers" is incorrect. To give you both a fantasy and real world touchstone, they were more "Rohan" than they were "Sioux". In terms of magic use, the Raumathari were not big creators of magic items, but enthusiastic magpies, stripping Imaskari outposts and settlements of much of their useful magic and sending expeditions into present-day Murghom and a few even into Raurin itself seeking even more. Sorcery was "in the blood" as it were, and it is thought that the clans and tribes that were given leadership positions under the aegis of the Imaskari were chosen for this talent. The origins of this magical legacy is thought to be the great dragon kingdoms of millennia past, and there is evidence in some still-existing draconic artifacts the archeological, not magical sense of at least one dragon kingdom in the area where humans were slaves to draconic rulers. The most notable of these is Gaerthalin's Skull in the Spiderhaunt Peaks, named for the human explorer who first brought word of it to the lands of the Inner Sea in the early 1300s DR, but known to locals for centuries as Argartarl, the "Dragonhead" in a local tongue. Gaerthalin's Skull is the petrified skull of a great copper wyrm, etched with draconic runes and seemingly a record of a now lost dragon kingdom that existed in the region before the Crown Wars. The remaining runes - for the elements have erased much of its surface - do not name the dragon ruler of this land (thought by some to be 'Kerlathar' and others 'Dyarlintul' - both names are found on the skull, but without context) but a section gives details of his servants and the rare gift of magic that was sometimes granted by the ingesting of some of his blood. In the time of Raumathar's conflict with Narfell, there were two "watershed" moments that created and contributed to the legend of their storied "battlemages". I note that "battlemage" is a clumsy term, first fostered by the scholar Galros of Candlekeep, whose field of study was the lands east of the Inner Sea. Galros was a painstaking and thorough archeologist, but his linguistic expertise was less than stellar. He derived the term "battlemage" from the word "tarannaerl", which was one of the Raumathari terms for its warriors. While "tar" was indeed "battle" in the Raumathari tongue, and "naer" was a word for "user of magic", the term in fact is better translated as "magically enspelled (naerl) battle champion (taran)" and was used specifically for the elite warriors handpicked and trained to infiltrate Nar strongholds and shatter their wards and bindings so as to unleash demonic servitors on their erstwhile masters. It is known that a team of tarannaerl managed to gain entrance into the Citadel Of Conjurers in the last days of the Great Conflagration, undoing many of the spell wards there and making the place untenable for humans thereby robbing the Nar of a last great bastion in which to make a final stand. The first watershed moment was the accession of Vayloss as Arkhan of Raumathar in -605 DR. Vayloss was a powerful sorcerer and the first to actively harness this talent in his people. He established "elanaer", which were the Raumathari equivalent of wizard schools where sorcerous talent was identified in the young and fostered and refined. Over time, the "elanaer" divided along elemental school lines, creating four separate groupings devoted to fire, earth, air and water respectively. The "elanaer" were responsible for training mages for battle and created a cadre of spellcasters who were fit and ready for military service in times of war. The second watershed moment was in the reign of Tallos II, when an Imaskari trove of construct magic and spell lore was discovered in the Shalhoond. Thought to be the work of a cabal of wizards led by the Artificer Wardde, this gift of magic was embraced by the Raumathari and for the first time in their history, the organised study of magic was promoted. The wizard class flourished and grew in this period throughout the kingdom and much in the way of resources was devoted to this specialised area of wizardry. The construct army that were built in the reign of Tallos IV only just failed to give Raumathar victory in the Great Conflagration, when it was unleashed upon the armies of Narfell. Category:Countries Category:Former countries Category:Locations in Northeast Faerûn